Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 266 - The Toledo War

Episode Date: June 25, 2023

Michigan, led by a 22 year old governor, invades Ohio to claim Toledo. PRE ORDER THE SHIRT: https://llbdmerch.com/ SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Emmanuel, Greg (2004). The 100-Yard War: Inside the 100-Year-Old Michigan–Ohio State Football Rivalry. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons. pp. 8–10. ISBN 0-471-67552-0. "The Ohio–Michigan Boundary War: Battle of Phillips Corners Marker #2–26". "The Toledo War". Geography of Michigan and the Great Lakes Region. Michigan State University.

Hey everybody, it's Joe. I'm just dropping in to tell you we currently have our first ever pre-order for shirts ongoing in our new merch store, llbdmerch.com. You'll find the link in the show notes and you can go and grab one. We currently are doing a pre-order for our Hong Christ t-shirt, Live Fast, Eat Grass. You can check it out at llbdmerch.com and now back to the show hey everybody welcome back to lions led by donkeys podcast i'm joe and with me is francis what's up buddy hey man uh yeah we're we're it's it's another fine it's wednesday it finally rained here uh today we haven't seen i haven't seen rain in like three and a half weeks. I was getting very

concerned for my cucumbers, but I think we're good to go now. Other than that, the normal everything is dire and terrible, and the United States is collapsing kind of stuff, but the cucumbers will be nice. At least they'll have cucumbers.

Make some pickles. I don't have a weather report because it's just kind of too hot here. At least you don't have the big plume of smoke. Have you seen the pictures coming out of New York? It looks like something out of fucking Blade Runner 2049. Yeah. Absolutely dire. Yet another thing we can blame Canadians for.

And, you know, for so long, it was always California that was on fire. But, like, it's California, so everybody's like, well, I mean, who cares? It's California. But, like, now that the East Coast is getting bombarded with this, I mean, I'm not going to say that, like, things are going to change, but at least there's gonna be more uh people probably hype beasting some weird app that lets you figure out your uh your carbon footprint or something so that canada doesn't catch on fire again thank you for

inventing a wildfire hype beast uh i could just see someone doing like a youtuber reaction face and pointing to the plume of smoke coming over there i mean i i lived in washington state for years and we got canadian wildfire smoke all the time as well as you know our own um so like i i am not unfamiliar with that i mean hell a couple a little while ago um i was living in hawaii almost i've been here almost a year now so i guess it wasn't that long ago and there was so many bad wildfires that like we had wildfires smoking honolulu it's like oh fucking christ you know i it always reminds me of like the do you ever hear the fact of um in like the 1100s or so uh that

native americans cut down so many trees so quickly and when i say cut down i meant they just set the shit on fire constantly like native american hunting was like what we can just burn this entire forest and it herds all the animals into the burning and then we can harvest them from there uh so you know great stewards of the lands they're uh dudes from the 1100s but like they did it so much that it just caused a mini ice age in england like england just one day was just like what the fuck it's cold for 10 years now and nobody knew why at least in england yeah i mean i'm sure people have shit weather and nobody will know like nobody will tell a difference in england um. Well, it was. It was suddenly cold,

and you listen to people in England now complain about how it's like 95 degrees and stuff because they have no infrastructure for weather that's above 90 degrees or fucking 20 degrees and it's literally your dues or whatever the fuck you guys measure it with. I mean, that's something

we're kind of going through here as well. i mean eurovan always kind of had a hot summer uh through like july and august but like our hot summer started in may um like you know it hasn't hit the 90s yet but like it was high 80s i believe yesterday which doesn doesn't happen this time of year. And we don't have the, like, of course, the answer to this is not like air conditioning, because then obviously that taxes the electrical systems and causes all sorts of problems. It's trying to fix a gunshot wound with a larger gunshot wound. And our energy.

I can't see. Give me the shotgun. Yeah. Like our energy infrastructure here is kind of me the shotgun yeah like our energy infrastructure here is kind of dire um we have a nuclear power plant but it was built by the soviets on a fault line and it it is kind of a everybody understands that the plant will one day kill us all because it's like a massive safety hazard to the point that uh like back during the war of 2020 here azerbaijan threatened to bomb the nuclear power plant

and like the joke i heard some of my friends say like we wouldn't fucking notice the difference like it it's kind of a a worldwide concern that nobody ever like squints at too hard because nobody ever cares about what happens in armenia but it's like that that fucking plant is held together with duct tape and some guy named armin hitting shit with a hammer uh but it it gives us like most of our electricity but at the same time like we don't have the money to build a new one. The only quote-unquote ally we have is too busy hemorrhaging their entire economy and some swamps in Ukraine. Nobody is going to help us build our energy infrastructure. That's why there's no good... I mean, it's climate change.

There's no good fucking answer to these problems. Especially when you live in a small country. What can we really do? We don't have the money to build another nuclear power plant. We don't have the money to build renewable resources. We don't have the money to eradicate every American who consumes more energy per person than most small cities do. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the

things it's always kind of pissed me off whenever you know because especially in the united states as far as climate change mitigation here there simply is none um but like otherwise i was i would talk more about it as as an armenian but as an american which i i do know about the american attempts to kind of curb it it's like all boils down to like personal responsibility which it's like great i'm sure that that's where that's working wonderfully anyway canada's on fire and uh new york is blanketed in a cloud of smoke that makes it look like out of the apocalypse yeah good thing you banned straws like good job yeah my i i love so in in st louis in the city we have dumpsters for trash we've got dumpsters for green you know yard waste and we've got dumpsters for recycling and like when we have

for like a while like yeah we do single stream recycling and then like a report comes out there's like well i mean like probably about 75 of that just goes to the dump anyway because like people throw like because people are like oh it's the blue dumpster i'm going to throw my trash in here because i don't give a shit about recycling of course um so like it's all it's all kind of just a completely useless thing but like also at the same time like me putting like the amazon cardboard box into the recycling bin isn't going to you know stop uh india from being 130 degrees right i'm not i mean like that's that shit's not on me guys like i'm i i am simply living in the world you created i did not fucking do this on my own yeah i mean like for comparison's sake like people here are so poor they sell the catalytic converters off of their cars um which then means that's and then see

armenians don't have the american ingenuity of just stealing their neighbors oh they also do that like someone stole my someone stole mine off of my car a while ago um and like they end up you know so it's not like people are going to stop driving their cars. The government doesn't do anything about anything, mostly. So the police here mostly just exist to run traffic cameras. So nobody is trying to enforce like, hey, please stop driving your black cloud gushing fucking, I don't know, mid-90s lada or whatever uh to the point that

like i think we've talked about this before where like i'm not sure if there if it's dust in the air or smog half the time um and it's only gotten worse of course i mean just like it has in the united states because whereas the united states does not build sustainable public transportation for because trains are communism or whatever 100 you know who likes trains china sure you don't want to be china you don't want to be chinese do you i mean here we can build we can't build another lot we can't add lines to our metro because we have no fucking money so it's like what the fuck and like when we do have money we have to put into our military because we're constantly being invaded so it's like well fuck i guess we're all just gonna die um yeah good stuff uh yeah i guess the only way climate change won't kill us is when the fault

line under the nuclear power plant eventually does so you know whatever man let the good times roll baby i like how the soviets just had kind of an idea of like let's just build things in the way that it could be a blockbuster movie in uh the year 2020 oh yeah like to say nothing of their infrastructure work other than the safety was was not something that was mostly considered um because like obviously one of the key parts of like a nuclear power plant not a nuclear scientist is you need a like a water source for cooling and there's a river there and they're like that'll that'll work uh and it's like hmm uh i mean this is a country where in 1988 we had an earthquake that was

virtually apocalyptic it deleted the north of the country um so it's like i guess i you chose poorly um it could have been built somewhere else uh not directly in a place known to have earthquakes like not everywhere in this country gets hit by earthquakes um there's areas that don't there's areas that still other rivers and lakes that you could use for cooling whatever uh anyway i hope it gets i get some sick fucking superpowers from when the the plant eventually explodes or leukemia whichever one happens first look live live your life and die in a way that uh way that would be considered for this podcast. Yeah.

I'll be able to type scripts even faster when I get a third arm growing out of my chest. Yeah, but your brain's going to melt out of your ears. But hey, I mean, that doesn't mean you can't stop podcasting. That is true. I'll just, I don't know, have to turn into a political podcast at that point or something. Speaking of politics, Francis. Hell yeah. Let's do it.

Let's talk about, let's put our finger on the pulse of humanity here. First, we have to go back to the 1700s. Absolutely. That's where it all fucking began. We're both from the Midwest. So I kind of figured that while you're on the show kind of filling in uh as as tom and nate have been kidnapped by pirates um and i'm not willing to pay the ransom that we we should talk about the time michigan invaded ohio um this is like a kind of a key part of midwestern american lore and even american

lore because a lot of people don't understand why like our uh like college teams have such a heated rivalry and why michigan and ohio kind of hate each other um that's because an event in history called the toledo war um so this is like has more implications and people kind of know and it involves a lot of characters i'll say um so at the time michigan was not a state it was the michigan territory and oh and the ohio was the state of ohio um They did kind of go to war, but not really, over a small strip of land that contained the town of Toledo.

It also completely collapsed the economy of Michigan, postponed their entrance into the Union as a state for years, and was almost entirely caused by a 22-year-old governor who, despite being kind of nuts, is probably one of the most important leaders

in Michigan history. This is, you know, American excellence really, really just like our continued ability to fail forward, to just like put the most insane people in charge of things. And somehow a hundred years later, it works out not in the best way. Certainly this could have been done better, I'm sure, as we're going to go through. Number one, just remove Ohio and so many American problems would be solved.

I recently saw, it was like a Twitter account, it was like fucked up maps or something. They replaced Ohio with France. And I was like, fuck, you've made it. How did you downgrade Ohio? If I wanted to live next to, obviously I don't live in Michigan anymore, but if i want to live next to a whole bunch of like self-important assholes who are proud of them like elitist for no reason i would just move back to texas i don't need to well isn't right but

that's like at least close to montreal so like there'd be a little bit of french connection going on in between. The real problem is it would be Michigan's culture being destroyed by the French in general. Other than Native American tribes, there's a reason why Michigan has

a ton of strangely French names we just mispronounce, like Detroit. Hey, St. Louis too. Now, the seeds of this not kind of a war were planted with the northwest ordinance of 1787 now the ordinance passed by what was then called the congress of confederation no not that confederation created the northwest territories out of land that had been previously owned by the british and french and of course after they slaughtered all the native amer Americans and took it over.

Though the British still had armies in the area, and the new baby version of the United States had no money and no army that might be able to press those claims, though eventually the U.S. did win on this. I understand I'm yada, yada, yada-ing a lot of post-war of independence history here. Bear with me. Now, this ordinance specified that this northwest territory was huge it covered what is today michigan ohio indiana and parts of other places like this is like a huge splotch of land um and the ordinance specified that the territory was to be divided into

not less than three or no more than five future states however because it's the late 1700s this required maps to be accurate um right i was i was gonna say like i know that like uh you know this is this is pre or post lewis and clark oh this is very much pre okay so yeah nobody nobody knows what the fuck anything is like there's some trees and some dead native americans that we killed and that's it that's all that's our landmark or the pile of heads that we created over there um and you know when you divvy up land based on maps and lines on maps which require the exact size and location of things like lakes you're gonna have a problem because things are more of a vibe than a science back then now yeah and and also this is a time when like you know our

there there's a uh a book um i can't remember the name of the the author but this guy he um he basically was just like hey i'm gonna recreate going down like the ohio river and then going down the mississippi river on like a flat boat uh he recreated the oregon trail too he's a crazy guy but you know um rivers don't stay in the same places back then like rivers like rivers froze over river banks and and they moved because water especially large bodies of water are constantly eroding and changing things so like even if you do have some kind of accurate mapping your lakes and your rivers, Oh, we mapped it two years ago.

Who the fuck knows where it is now? You know, like it could be, the river could be suddenly wide or it could be not wide or it could be flooded. So there's just all kinds of like, you know, they don't have sat maps going on was what they really need.

Yeah. Um, like for instance, we're going to talk about a swamp that used to exist back then that literally does not anymore um i know we're talking about ohio you already said yeah unfortunately that the whole thing is swamp um now this is going to be really important because two of these places that are noted on the maps happen to outline the future michigan and ohio territories now ohio with its importance in trade quickly swelled with new settlers well michigan kind of remained something

of a frontier backwater back then michigan was mostly forest um it was really rough place to live unless you were like a frontiersman who worked in logging or fur trapping, you had no good fucking reason to go there. And at the time, to become or to petition to become a state, I should say, you need to have a population of at least 60,000. That's it, 60,000. And, you know, what would become Ohio or the eastern part of the Northwest Territory broke that threshold with the enabling act of 1802 they can they conducted a census they set up a territorial government and then became a state in 1803 now this is where things become a problem because when you start carving out states you have to formalize borders with the rest of what remained of the northwest territory which is pretty fucking

hard since nobody was actually sure of where the great lakes even ended specifically lakes michigan and erie and these were used as like points were to draw the border as everything was based around like you know the corner of erie or the corner of lake michigan and this complete like not understanding of maps and locations of things was completely acknowledged by the federal government. The best maps they had showed Lake Michigan's southern tip as being several miles north of its actual location, something that was argued as being pretty obviously untrue to anybody familiar with the area? So as it rested, Ohio believed the maps that benefited them. As a result, the original border of the state of Ohio was placed at the mouth of the Maumee River in the future city of Toledo in northern Ohio, rather than what would be michigan the people you know who are trying to make michigan a thing was like hey what the fuck um the congressional committee report so that a clause defining the northern boundary of ohio depended on a quote a fact not yet ascertained and then kicked the can down the road for someone else to figure out that's that's that's the future government's problem not current government's problem wait what's i mean so i mean we're talking about a

territory and they're like all right let's carve it into a state sure but like why does anybody give a shit like where it's gonna be is like you're there i'm there fine whatever like it feels like they're already just like well we're gonna be over here and your guys are gonna be over there and we're gonna draw a line here and now guys are going to be over there and we're going to draw a line here. And now I hate you. Well, I mean, yes, but also this is early, early United States. Like the federal government kind of only exists as a as an idea at this point. Like you as an American citizen or whatever state or territory you happen to be in, your life pretty much depends on the state that

you live in. You want your state to have... Just like today, of course, your state will directly benefit from, say, having Toledo, which despite that sounding ridiculous as we sit here in 2023, it was a super important transit and trading hub. i and it was caught in like this federal black hole with the state of ohio saying fuck the federal government and including it in their territory within the state's constitution with an added measure that they would continue to claim it regardless of any future survey done by anybody who might say otherwise. And state constitutions are some of my favorite, like, most insane documents created by just batshit insane frontiersmen

who are all probably, like, you know, very malnourished, eating jerky most of their time, and riddled with syphilis. To be fair, most of these dudes are, like, lawyers from New York. Oh, okay. I mean, my point still stands. They're still riddled with syphilis.

I mean, yeah. Syphilis i mean yeah syphilis and cholera they join forces yeah they do the fusion dance and then just murder you um now nobody really thought anything about this for a few years because the michigan territory didn't exist yet but it was made in 1805 the federal government who, who had never given Ohio Toledo officially, then included it within the southern borders of the new Michigan territory, completely ignoring the Ohio State Constitution, which of course pissed off Ohio. Because this is only a few years removed from the War of Independence. Nobody wants a strong federal government that can override independent States. So like this pissed off Ohio in a way that is like special, especially if it's time,

right? Like what is the, how does the federal government have the right to come in here and steal fucking Toledo from us? You know, uh, to a sentence, nobody ever thought that they would utter.

Exactly. Yeah. And unless you're, unless you're unless you're an ohio a toledan i guess like uh and look i i get i get it you know the um this is ours that that shouldn't be yours it doesn't make sense like that the federal government would do that other than incompetence like it seems like the easiest thing to do would be like oh you guys are claiming that it's fine it's yours whatever michigan also wanted something michigan also wanted it and

like michigan's not a thing anymore yet i mean it's michigan doesn't exist you can have an upper peninsula it was well at this point only like a small portion of the upper peninsula is included in the michigan territory um but like you know they don't want to create a territory that is effectively useless to them other than like a fur trapping place. So they wanted to make it like economically viable. And so the Toledo of the yesteryear is certainly not the Toledo of today. And I'm sure there's people from Toledo. They're like, Hey, fuck you.

It's fine. Your city sucks. Mine sucks too. Let's move on. Um, we're all Midwesterners here, man. All of our towns suck. Unless you're from Chicago. Chicago is the only real city in the Midwest.

We all properly hate Chicagoans. And rightfully so. Fucking Illinoisers. What do you call people from Illinois? I'm Illinoised by them them i'll tell you that now i was gonna say hoosiers but that's indiana yeah i mean are they really any different indiana is just corn illinois all right this this podcast is immediately being turned off by anybody who's not from the midwest um now this is an era of this is not the era of like large scale railroads, right?

This is the early 1800s in the Midwest, especially canals and rivers were the main commercial routes for pretty much everywhere and everything, you know, especially in a place like the Midwest at the time is mostly unbroken forests. Like, yeah, it's's real there's nothing there i mean look how big michigan is a population of like 10 million now um and it's a very big state mine as long as you remember that most of the upper peninsula was not part of michigan yet but like it doesn't even have 60 000 people yet like you could go fucking weeks without seeing another human being you know yeah missouri missouri is the same way if you drive like outside of the city um like the highways down down to like leonard wood take 44 down leonard wood it is just all like unbroken forest yeah and that's like northern michigan to this day as well yeah if it if it wasn't for like you know a stuckies and a come and

go being uh dropped off at a highway exit there'd just be nothing but trees yeah the only type of civilization you're gonna find as you travel north into michigan is like the required walmart and some guy selling you meth so you can go work in logging uh i have i know a couple people that like to go to the upper peninsula because like it's the one place that i can go where my phone doesn't work oh yeah 100 i mean i've met one guy from the upper peninsula in my entire life and it was in the army and he grew up in a place where they did not have cell phones because they did not work and when he had to go test like take the recruiter's test or whatever to join the army he had to go into wisconsin because it was the closest place um so like it even today

like this people who are not from these areas or especially people who aren't american kind of don't understand how super fucking densely forested and remote certain parts of michigan can be and this is this early 1800s so like yeah you don't you don't reach the great plains until you're on light until you're at kansas city or kansas nebraska it's kind of stuff like that we're we're all we're all old growth forest around here yeah and so like travel and trade through this area is virtually impossible which is why the commercial train routes through canals rivers and lakes are so important and back then there was an area called the Great Black Swamp, which no longer exists, that surrounded Toledo, which made it virtually impossible to build a road through it.

So it made the port of Toledo beyond important as a shipping and economic hub. This importance was only increased because they began building canals that would connect toledo and eventually detroit to the east coast so like you know this is a big fucking deal right um outside of shipping the area around toledo not in the swamp is also really good for agriculture where you know it isn't unbroken forest so like you know michigan wants all of these things this is obviously good land for agriculture is still important but it's even more important the 1800s where like you're probably a subsistence farmer it makes a lot of sense why ohio and michigan would both want toledo one for economics and two being in control of a port an area so regionally and then nationally important as Toledo, because remember

how small the US is at this point, would make them not only economically important, but very strategically important to the federal government. Then at this point, Michigan has the federal government telling them that Toledo is yours. Ohio says, fuck you, it's ours. So Michigan, of course, compromises and moves in. Michigan settlers just move into Toledo and the surrounding areas. They're squatting.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but in the Midwest. Instead of drone strikes, you just get some two guys bumping into each other and be like, oop. Yeah, except for in this time, the Ohioans, they fucking deserve it. Now, don't get me wrong. The 22-year-old governor that we're going to talk about soon would absolutely have drone-striked Ohioans

if those things existed at the time. Now, when Michigan settlers began moving in, Ohio got pissed and demanded again that the federal government get involved and settle this claim and make it official. They tried, but they kept pushing it back time and demanded again that the federal government get involved and settle this claim and make it official they tried but they kept pushing it back time and time again then the war of 1812 started the white house got fucking burnt down and they had to push down the road a bit further then indiana became a thing and the federal government modified michigan's borders pushing them further north to give indiana access to Michigan and causing Michigan itself to lose 10 miles of land and unfettered lake

access. It was very important for Gary, Indiana to exist at this time. That's right. This infuriated Michigan and kind of set an idea in place that like if the federal government tries to fuck us over again, we're not going to let them. Is that really what's going to happen here, Ohio? Are you not going to let them? I think you're going gonna let them is that is that really what's gonna happen here ohio are you not

gonna let them i think you're gonna let them well i mean like ohio is fine with this because like first of all the ohio and michigan governors already fucking hate one another and this is like you know and ohio has like lobbyists in government to fuck over Michigan at this point. Because remember, they're a state. They have power. They have congressmen. Michigan is a territory. They don't have shit.

So they have no power in this situation. And when the federal government finally did send in a surveyor, it was a U.S. surveyor general, a guy named Edward Tiffinin who happened to be a former governor of ohio i'm i'm i'm sensing i'm sensing some bias is going to be happening here yeah i mean so the federal government had their own borders drawn at this point and they wanted him to go and survey based on their borders because they're the federal government, you are going to survey based on this survey that we have done and make sure it's correct. He instead surveyed based on the Ohio Constitution's land claim and, of course, found that nothing was wrong with what Ohio was saying. Michigan's territorial governor, a guy named Lewis Cass, who we're going to talk about a little bit more, but a little bit more, who would eventually go on to become the biggest champion of Native American genocide of the Midwest and future secretary of war to noted psychopath Andrew Jackson, refused to accept Tiffin's survey.

Now, small side note here. I knew the name Cass sounded familiar. For people who are unaware, I was born and raised in Michigan, near a place called Cass Lake. There's also a Cass County and several colleges, schools, streets, uh, all named after this guy.

Um, well done, Michigan. You fucking suck. Look, if you go to, uh, if you go down to grand Rapids, man,

um, what, uh, what's her name? The, um, the boss's name is on everything. So, you know, uh, onceids man um what uh what's her name the um devos's name is on everything so you know uh once again just uh allowing the worst people to put their names on everything that we

have uh not working out great for us that at least makes sense not a good way because the devos family is without going too much into it one of the biggest power brokers in the entire state um they're incredibly wealthy um so they can buy things and put their names on it. Whereas this guy was a governor in the early 1800s who probably has the blood of 100,000 people and some change on it. He was Secretary of War when Andrew Jackson openly committed genocide, and he was a full supporter of that. And like, for instance,

Michigan knows how fucked up this guy is because the, one of the government buildings that the state government works out of in Lansing was once named after him and they changed it. So like they know, but they like rename all this shit guys. What are we doing? Good God. We fucked up god we fucked up fucked up yeah uh and now nobody can say i never shit talk my own state all right fuck michigan you guys suck and that includes me um yeah and and but only we get to do that

if you're from california keep your mouth shut yeah you just stay out of it uh you guys have enough problems don't worry about ours um now lewis ordered his own survey to be done lewis cast that is uh according to the original ordinance from the 1700s which found the federal government and the michigan territories claims to be correct after doing this more michigan settlers began to move into what was now known as the toledo strip or this gap where the surveys between ohio and michigan kind of intersected uh it was this it was i mean calling it a strip makes it sound quite small but it was actually pretty pretty big um but it was it was a thin but long strip of land if you know what i'm saying um and as everybody knows when it comes to maps width is important um and you know they also

began to do something more than that which is weirdly something that ohio didn't do they began setting up government offices building roads and and providing government services like tax collection in the area which ohio hadn't done i'm i i had to do a real quick search, and I'm very upset that there is no strip club in Toledo named Toledo Strip. It's unfortunate. There's Peppermint Hippo, there's Climax, and there's Trophy Club. Peppermint Hippo? Like Climax means coming.

What the fuck does Peppermint Hippo mean? There's a lot of strip clubs in Jesus Christ. Of course there is. I mean, you should see detroit good god um one time i took a i was back in detroit uh a couple months ago and i took a wrong turn because i haven't been there in a very long time and i ended up on a road that was just like on both sides of the road corner to corner nothing but strip clubs like they can't all be profitable all of our strip clubs are over in illinois all the good

ones uh because that's what i think of of quality about illinois strip clubs you can't here here's the thing in missouri you uh can take a top off but you can't serve beer so you can go to illinois and you can be topless you can be bottomless and beer can be served so you know it's a little bit of everything that you want fair enough uh i've been to i've been to missouri strip clubs man like i thought i thought normal strip clubs were depressing oh i'm fucking a fucking juice bar uh by the side of the highway on a tuesday afternoon is uh perfect perfect place for you to like consider like what am i doing with my life i mean that is kind of my opinion of strip clubs in general but yeah um it is i haven't been to a strip club since uh i was 23 and the last time

i was at a strip club i was the designated driver and i was like whoop nope this isn't fun anymore every time i've gone to one it's been against my will i've always been out like i've been maybe twice in my life and i've always been out with a group of friends they have a couple beers and like bro let's go the fucking club let's go to the fucking club. Let's go to the strip club. I'm like, I would rather go to the regular club, which I also hate. There's beer here. And if anything, I want to go home and drink.

Why don't we go home and watch a movie? I would rather drink in my basement. Yeah, by myself or with my dog so that it's not sad. You really want to set the ambience? Drink alone in your basement and play shitty fucking club music. Same thing. Yeah, and then just burn like $150 cash. Yeah, that's right.

Now, so they have government offices set up. There's settlers coming in. They've sent in cops they're collecting taxes michigan had effectively illegally occupied toledo and it kind of stayed that way for years until the 1820s ohio who insisted the problem never really existed because they considered the situation solved by their state constitution refused to even debate this ongoing territorial dispute with the territorial governor of michigan leading to something of an impasse then a 22 year old named stevens mason accidentally became the territorial governor of michigan and i do not

use the word accidentally lightly yeah explain explain how somebody accidentally gets voted into office oh he's not voted um now mason has a has a very powerful father to thank for him starting in politics his dad's name was john mason and you know he sets stevens mason's uh stevens mason his name is stevens not steven um as. He sets him up for life. John Mason had been very close with Andrew Jackson, leveraging connections and wealth into becoming the Secretary of the Michigan Territory. Now, the secretary is just below the governor, territorial governor. Jackson was the type of president to use people that were loyal to him rather than competent. So whenever a problem would come up, he would tap people he knew were loyal to himself.

So when things were brewing with Mexico, he sent John Mason as something of a presidential fetch quest down there and eventually play in a very important role in fomenting the Texas Revolution. there and eventually play in a very important role in fomenting the Texas revolution. Now, Jackson wanted to replace John Mason with someone else just as loyal as he had been. So he decided his son, Stevens Mason, would be a good choice, despite the fact he was only 19 at the time, making him not even old enough to vote yet. Because as we all know, you can vote when you're 18 in the United States, but that wasn't a thing until 1971. Previous to that, it was 21. So he became the secretary of the territory of Michigan before he could vote.

Cool. Good for him. We love a go-getter. He actually had two jobs. He was in charge of, he was the head of the Michigan Territory Bureau of Indian Affairs as well. Again, 19.

At the same time this has happened, Jackson appointed lewis cass as the secretary of war now this made uh the the role of territorial governor open and that was filled by a man named george brian porter in 1831 porter was kind of a nobody he was a sickly man who never came to work. He never showed up to Detroit. Not that I blame him for that. And this left the day-to-day functioning of the governorship to his secretary, Stevens Mason, who is now in his early 20s, which effectively made him acting governor, though he still had to play the part of secretary. play the part of secretary. And this was not a hidden thing. People called him the boy governor because they knew Porter never came to work. And then facing all kinds of pressure from not showing up to work to local

press treating him like shit, he said, fuck it, I'll go to Detroit in 1834. This happened to be directly in the middle of a cholera epidemic and he died. Just showing up and being like, whew, I need a sip of water. All right, now the boy's in charge now.

Stepping off the boat, just turning to dust. So Stevens became the official acting governor at the age of 22, completely by accident. Now, Stevens Mason is a complicated character because he was a Jacksonian loyalist, so he's a fucking bastard. But he was a champion for Michigan statehood. He commissioned a census to show that Michigan had over 80,000 residents, which the threshold was 60,000, remember? And the total number, he also included in the Toledo Strip, and then petitioned the federal government to join the union as an official state.

The government immediately refused, citing the border dispute they had with Ohio. You know that bullshit that we keep kicking down the road? Yeah, that's why you can't have it. This is your fault now. And there was Ohio lobbying going on in Congress to try to keep Michigan a territory. So they had some help in this. Stevens never backed down from the claims that Michigan had over the Toledo Strip. And he continuously pissed off the governor of Ohio, a guy named Robert Lucas, by continuing to direct agents of the Michigan government to operate in the area,

like I said, collecting taxes. And obviously, tax money is something that Ohio wanted. So Lucas finally ordered agents of the Ohioan state to move into the Strip and set up their own parallel government administration in 1835 to include their own tax collectors. So that meant if you happen to be caught there during this small time period, and we'll say why this doesn't last very long, you could be getting taxed by two different state governments. This is,

this is some like Midwest anti-Pope shit going on. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and there's even a swamp involved and as an extra fuck you to Stevens Mason, uh, they named the, the strip area,

Lucas County after the governor of Ohio. In response, in February 1835, Mason oversaw the passage of something called the Pains and Penalties Act, which is a very severe sounding thing for a territorial governor to pass. This would punish anybody working for the Ohio state government within the strip to fines equaling nearly $30,000 in today's money, as well as five years in prison. And that was hard labor, making big rocks and little rocks and shit. Now, the way the law was worded, it was Ohio agents operating within Michigan, but he knew exactly what he meant. Now, being an acting governor, kind of like today, makes you the commander-in-chief of the territorial militia. Today, obviously, we don't have territorial militias. We have the National Guard.

But so he appointed General Joseph Brown, the commander of the territorial militia, a veteran of the Black Hawkawk war brown had since gone into semi-retirement running a stagecoast hustle that purposefully took dumb routes that made no sense and only stopped at places where he owned the only hotels allowing him to fleece people out of money everybody involved in this is just very much a guy of their time i i love i love that this is just like all that america once was just a whole bunch of like tiny donald trump's running around and just like how can i fleece everybody out of everything while also being the guy in charge of everything yep now stevens gave general brown

orders to take the militia which is around a thousand men and move it into the strip and actively stop the ohio government from attempting to control it. Now, he kind of did martial law without declaring it. I want to know how you convince like a thousand dudes to die for Michigan. Like, Michigan is like, what, two? It's not even a state yet. And just like, all right, look, all of you, grab your muskets. We're going to go take over this. And it's just like, all right, look, all of you grab your muskets. We're going to go take over this. And it's just like fucking why?

The same reason why you can get a whole bunch of Americans to join the military today. Money. Get a paycheck. Yeah. You get a paycheck. Being in the militia is paid. All that Toledo tax money is now funding the occupational force that's coming. That's right.

You know, a lot of dudes were sick of like i don't know killing rabbits for their fur or whatever like yeah i'll take a couple dollars to go stand around in toledo i'll kill i'll kill some ohioans for their fur instead that's right now this kind of officially started the unofficial war because ohio quickly responded governor lucas commissioned a former probate judge named john bell. No, not John Bell Hood. John Bell, a general, and ordered him to take 600 armed men to counter the Michigan militia. Now, I feel strange saying Michigan militia because everybody kind of knows what that means in the modern context. For people who are unaware, the Michigan militia, as they exist today, is a group of psycho extremists.

Yeah. Um, like anybody, anybody who's Timothy McVeigh and shit. Um, anybody who's part of a state who specifically say they're part of a state militia now is part of like some crazy group of, yeah,

they're fascists. There's no other way around it. We, the Missouri, the Missouri militia, I looked them up, uh, not too long ago.

And, um, I, I saw that the Missouri militia on their terrible website specifically has to call out. It's like, we are open for anybody, any color, anybody can join. Every pitcher's a white guy. Right, every one of them.

Please, a black guy, please come down here, and we promise not to make you be put the confederate uniform on when we do our weird civil war reenactments and stuff. This is very strange. I saw them, I also saw them back when I used to go to gun shows. I don't anymore because there's an uncomfortable amount of Nazi

material that is sold at literally every gun show. Of course there is. If you're wondering what the uncomfortable amount is, it's any. Yeah, there's any amount and I don't care like oh i'm just a historian no you're not no you're fucking not if you're collecting nazi memorabilia and you do not own a museum shut up shut the fuck up and none of that's memorabilia it's all new shit you're just getting fleeced right like look man there's not that many nazi plates out there and also what do you want me to do eat fucking dinner off of it get

out of here but the missouri militia had a had a very sad table set up in a corner somewhere with uh two old guys wearing uh bdu uniforms and this was a while ago so uh bdu uniforms but also like you know the the navy or the marine eight point patrol cap thing they've got. Yeah. So it was very like kind of like you guys look like more of a militia in a third world country out of Africa or something more than my Missouri militia. And no, I don't want anything to do with you people. Please stop. I mean, the Michigan militia is kind of a weird topic.

Maybe I can do like a bonus episode for it at some point. Because it was a weird cultural touchstone in Michigan. And not that people supported it, of course. But the weird people in the militia had their wives do calendar photos. And they sold them at generally acceptable places, not just weird nazi gun shows which is i should say every gun show it's such a strange part of like mid to late 90s michigan culture um because they're i mean they're they're budding terrorists but yeah not that michigan militia i just had to say that because it does make me feel weird saying michigan militia um michigan militia. I just had to say that because it does make me feel weird saying Michigan militia.

Michigan militia parentheses kind of good. Yeah, the normal one that should have existed when it did. Right. The one that the Second Amendment talked about. Yes. Not whatever exists now. Yeah. Yeah. General Bell and the Ohioan militia of 600 armed men marched towards the strip

with explicit orders to counter the Michigan militia. They got within 10 miles before General Brown and Governor Mason himself arrived to begin the official military occupation of Toledo. Hell yeah, lead from the front, man. Now, at this point, shit had gotten so out of control that even Andrew Jackson thought they had gone too far. He asked his attorney general, again named Benjamin Butler, what he should do. Butler said that the federal government's stance is pretty clear that the strip belonged to Michigan. Now, here's a problem. As I've stated multiple times, Ohio is a state, giving it power in Congress. It was also, as it kind of is now, a swing state in the presidential elections.

Jackson was worried that if he came to the side of Michigan, it would ruin his party's chance to win anything within the state. And he was a Democrat at the time, which is much different. But Jackson picked a middle ground. He would send another survey team out to settle the matter. Until that was done, the strip would act as something of a DMZ. Militias would have to leave and people that lived within the strip would get to pick which government that they were to follow.

You'd get to choose if you were a citizen of Michigan or Ohio. You could just go on living your life that way. Governor Lucas figured that this is a very practical solution to the problem and sent his militia home. He figured that like we're both adults here we're both governors let's let's handle this like we should however

stevens mason said fuck that shit kept his army in place and refused to listen to the president of the united states sure why should he now here's the thing. There was elections coming up for the government of Ohio, right? Three days later. Now, this was in accordance with Jackson's proposal. And so with that, remember, they're holding these elections and there is a standing Michigan law, the Pains and Penalties Act, that anybody working for the state of ohio would be arrested uh and and and fine and this included people who voted like if you voted in ohio's election you were considered working for the ohio state government and you were thrown in jail as specifically the monroe county jail ran by the sheriff who was given the authority by Stevens Mason to control law enforcement over the entire strip. This ended with militiamen and cops intimidating people

trying to vote in Ohio's election and getting thrown in jail. This is where the Battle of Phillips Corner broke out. It wasn't actually a battle. There was no battles in this war. On April 26, 1835, a group of surveyors working for the government, the federal government, mind you, were out working when 60 members of the Michigan militia showed up, all armed with muskets. They started shouting insults at the survey team and told them to go away and not do their job.

When they didn't listen, they started shooting their muskets into the air with the warning that if the next volley would be directly at them the surveyors of course ran the fuck off leaving some people behind and the militia captured some and that was the battle was over so like there's literally armed dudes from michigan kidnapping agents of the federal government at gunpoint that's uh you know and this is the ironically doing exactly what militias today wish that they could do oh 100 yeah i mean there was that weird group of like extremists who were planning to kidnap the governor of michigan not that long ago uh so yeah they still try they, you know, thankfully for us, they're very stupid. You know, at this point, Ohio is fucking furious. They start pouring millions of dollars in money back then.

So, like, several million dollars in today money into their militia because they realize, like, we might actually have to fight Michigan over this. Michigan responded by dumping money into their militia militia as well which is a problem because michigan is poor they do not have a lot of money uh mason is effectively kneecapping his entire economy to fund his like occupation army um yes uh 100 agree let's do it yeah uh and he swore to oppose any ohio state government moves into the strip and so one of the things that ohio built there was the court of common pleas for lucas county um so like that was like considered like the pinnacle the pinnacle of of ohio state government in the area stevens also began to form a state government, which is weird because he was not given the right to do so by the federal government.

They were, their petition for statehood had been declined. Like they had elections. He picked congressmen. He was going to send them to the, to like to Congress. And like, Congress is like,

what the fuck are you doing? You're a territory you don't exist yet go away and michigan newspapers called more and more men to come forward to defend their state against ohio tyranny and you know what had they been more successful perhaps we would have uh had a better united states here. I do not disagree. I believe in greater Michigan. Ohio is ancestral Michigander territory. Now, Governor Lucas ordered a full headcount of their state militia, making preparations for a actual no shit mobilization in case Michigan might start shooting at people. Because at this point, they probably would.

This became a bit of a propaganda piece, however. Now, the Ohioans had around 10,000 men registered in their militia roles. So the Michigan press began calling them the Ohio Million, making them sound like a much bigger threat than they would actually be. And the largest newspaper in the Michigan territory dared them to march on Toledo and, quote, welcome them to hospitable graves. Never has letters to the editor been this good. You know, and I'm curious, like, so you get a you print the newspaper, you put it in there and then what what, you mail it to Ohio to have them read it? How is this working out? How do these threats work back?

I guess you really didn't have much to read. This is like all propaganda. This is for internal audiences. This newspaper is meant to be seen by Michiganders and be like, oh, the Ohioans are coming to, I don't know, destroy everything we love, hockey and cheap beer. We can't let them do that. Now, citizens from both sides began beating the shit out of one another

and running spy rings within the Toledo Strip to watch for militia movements. Cities, counties, and territories began filing tons of lawsuits against one another, as well as people, like individual Ohioans and Michiganders within the Strip, would beat the shit out of each other on the street and then sue one another in court. There, there was, that is, there is nothing more American than that.

This is, this is a more American war than the civil war ever was. And like the weird part is like nobody was sure which court should handle these lawsuits. So they just didn't, of course not like, well, you claim this happened in Ohio.

You claim this happened and fucking, you know what? We quit. we don't care fuck off um then on july 15th 1835 the war had its first and only official casualty deputy sheriff joseph wood uh he worked for monroe county michigan uh the sheriff's office and went to the strip to arrest a guy named benjamin stickney at his family's home for ohio government actions how are ohio being for acute ohio-ness yeah he was an ohio partisan you see um however wood and the posse that he brought with him found themselves under attack by the entire stickney family and then benjamin's son I swear to god this is his name Two Two Stickney his name is Two

T-W-O Is he the second child at least? I would hope maybe it's like Evander Holyfield how he names all of his kids in some variation of Evander so he can't forget their names he's like yeah I got one two and three right there Two Stickney stabbed the shit out of Deputy Wood with a pen knife and scampered off into the woods their names he's like yeah i got one two and three right there um two stick me stab these

shit out of deputy wood with a pen knife and scampered off into the woods now wood was not seriously injured i should point out america's first cryptid right there uh to to this day the the stick knee kid still comes out and occasionally stabs a Michigander. You know why I got named two? Because I got two knives. Yeah, so he ran off back into Ohio. Now, obviously, the Monroe County Sheriff and the Michigan Territorial Governor is like, you have to extradite him to our territory to face charges, and Ohio refused.

extradite him to our territory to face charges and ohio refused um now when that didn't work governor stevens mason demanded president jackson turn this case of the cops stabbing over to the u.s supreme court and he was promptly laughed at um like that's not what this is for go back to fucking ann arbor you loser how what is the supreme court for at this point i mean kind of mostly the same thing as for now um like at the at this point they weren't even sure if the supreme court could legally rule on state boundaries either so like fair enough i mean uh however there was very nearly a real goddamn battle like a bloody battle a pitched battle a month later governor lucas ordered a court session in toledo to be held at the court of common pleas now this is the ultimate form of legitimate

legitimacy for his own government in the area and stevens got fucking furious he ordered a thousand militiamen to grab their guns and stop it from happening by any means necessary. The only thing that compromise them to an extreme, uh, to a permanent end, I'm going to compromise the Toledo government to a permanent end. Uh, the only thing that stopped, but would have been the dumbest battle in American military history from

unfolding in fucking Toledo, Ohio was that when the militia showed up, they found that the court was empty because the Ohioans had already had their secret midnight court session and fled the area. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just, I mean, what better way to do judicial review than in the heat of the night, I guess.

Yeah, we have to hold our local court session at midnight in case this strange Michigan militia comes and turns our heads into canoes via musket ball look it's it's heartening to know that even uh back in the 1700s political uh leaders and groups were afraid of just a mob of american dipshits coming in with guns and murder mass murdering a bunch of people yep you know good good good good that we're sticking with the past and we're moving on to a brighter future where just one man can take a gun and

completely disrupt a political gathering. I mean, I believe in traditions. That actually happened here. A guy with an AK murdered half the parliament in 1999. So, yeah, it's kind of a universal

thing. Now, Andrew Jackson is finally fucking sick of Stephen Mason and removed him from office, replacing him with a guy named John Horner. Now, despite Stephen Mason obviously being kind of nuts, Michiganders fucking loved him. He was

incredibly popular, and despite trying to start a war with ohio he had actually done a lot of work to improve michigan as a whole so like when horner showed up to work and like he when he went to detroit people lined the street to throw literal shit at him and burn him in effigy. Which is a tradition I believe that Americans should bring back. We need more effigy burning and shit throwing. And then in 1835, when the Michigan Territory held an election, he lost to Stevens Mason. This.

Which I'm sure made Andrew Jackson really fucking happy. He's like, God fucking damn it. The kid's back again. It's that scene from The Simpsons of Mo throwing Barney out. He just reappears right behind him. I want to see a picture of this kid. I want to know the man. And I hope he lives a long and fruitful life.

I got some bad news for you. Or good news. We'll see. Now, the fact that the economy was dying and the president personally hated him did not slow stevens down after his election he went on a large-scale educational reform program funded the construction of canals and began to build railroads so like yeah he's he's a good governor despite the fact he is also somehow a state-based warmonger in 1836 jackson was still trying to find a way to end this shit

once and for all and he said you know what we'll give you the entire fucking upper peninsula in exchange for you leaving toledo alone now the upper peninsula is massive and everybody knows today it's pretty uh you know a very lucrative large piece of land but at the time it was not to be completely fucking worthless. So Michigan rejected it. They wanted Toledo because it was worth money. Yeah, there's already people there to pay taxes. A solid tax base.

Yeah, a solid tax base. But most importantly, the shipping lanes. Super, super important. The Upper Peninsula, you got forests and bears and shit, nothing else. Stevens had imploded the treasury because he'd been paying thousands of militiamen to occupy Toledo. Facing

an economic doomsday, Michigan watched on as the federal government decided to give out bonuses, like cash, to states in 1836 because the federal government discovered that they had a cash surplus and they were giving out millions of dollars to states, but to states not territories so if michigan yeah so if michigan didn't figure out

this little toledo problem michigan would miss out on a federal bailout that they desperately fucking needed because again they built a goddamn army to invade ohio so on so they're so they're trying to buy them off it sounds like like you guys fuck off we'll make you a state and we'll give you this money kind of i mean this is going to happen either way but like people were really hoping that michigan might just take the cash and shut up on top of taking the entire upper peninsula which is huge um so on december 14th 1836 another convention of michigan representatives gathered in ann arbor to approve the trade for the upper peninsula though this convention was pretty much illegal it was completely boycotted by the wig party regular citizens considered it illegitimate because it wasn't actually ordered

by territorial lawmakers or the governor and the federal congress wasn't even sure what happened in ann arbor was illegal but uh said, fuck it. You got a deal. Let's do it. It's known as the Frostbitten Convention. Yeah. So we're cold. Figure this shit out so we can all go home. Yeah.

So with that, the war came to an end. Michigan officially became a state a month later and was given the Upper Peninsula. And now the Upper Peninsula was thought to be useless. It ended up being Michigan's main economic driver until it became the Motor City. Because they found massive amounts of ore and minerals, like copper and iron, were found three years later and pretty much gave Michigan an economy. It didn't have one really before that other than logging and fur trapping. Stevens Mason went on to win reelection,

but accidentally implode the state economy again after falling for a bad bond scheme from a crooked bank and settled the state with tens of millions of dollars of debt during a time that that just didn't happen to states. My man, my man invested in the doge coin and that look. Yeah. He tried to, he tried to buy into the dip or whatever. Now, rather than stick around for another term and possibly face losing an election,

he quit politics, opened a private law firm, and moved to New York after catching more than one corruption charge on his way out of Michigan. And then he caught pneumonia and died at the age of 31. Aw. Yeah. Well, I mean, at least he died of things that kill people rather than, you know,

his own stupidity. The candle that burns the brightest burns the fastest, Francis. Yes, and coughs its lungs up very, very wetly. Yeah, getting them moist lungs. Now, somehow, despite all this, a border dispute went on

around Lake Erie until, you want to guess? I'm going to say up until the 1900s. 1973. Boom. The Supreme Court finally ruled on it, backing Ohio's claim from over 100 years before. And there was like in the early 1900s, like around 19. You say the Supreme court figured it out

like yeah we can do border disputes stop this shit yeah uh they started doing that around the 1800s like mid to late 1800s already as well um and like there was uh like bickering between the states i believe like 1915 ish over like border pylons being built. Like we got to build the wall, Joe. Yeah, you must construct additional pylons. Now that is kind of the reason why Michigan and Ohio hate one another for no good reason. The end.

That is the Toledo War. Nobody died. A cop got stabbed by a man named Two and Michigan invaded a state. That's the only time that's ever happened ah and which is a shame because like it feels like there should have been a lot more but i mean there's just so much so much territory that like it would just be easy like well fuck it i guess we'll expand this way where there's where the where our only resistance is is bears and native

americans but like toledo already existed uh and everybody wants everybody wanted toledo now nobody wants toledo i don't think nobody wants hawaii nobody nobody even wants ohio anymore yeah i mean to be fair i'm i uh as a as someone from michigan it's truly a glass houses situation uh absolutely yeah like nobody nobody can sit here and listen to the story and like comes from a midwest state and being like ah well my state's history is nothing but clean like we did a whole episode on on jesse james uh and my state fucking idolizes that guy for some reason uh even though he was a confederate shithead but you know yeah i mean we have we have a lake named after a genocidal freak you know things happen yeah uh shit we've this is like when they uh renamed all of the the

american military bases that were named after confederates and they're like here's some uh here's some people that uh that weren't confederates and like oh well some of these people are still like the worst people in the world hey we got fort liberty now which is a fantastic story because like nobody could agree so they just they went with the worst idea ever let's name after a vague concept good idea boys let's break for lunch um francis we do a thing on this show called questions from the legion um if you would like to ask us a question from the Legion, donate to us on Patreon and ask us through there our community Discord, which you'll also get

access to, and we will answer it here on the show. This one is you guys work a lot. What do you do for fun? Sorry, I read this wrong. What is something new that you do for fun? New that I do for fun i don't knew that i do for fun

um uh i mean i bounce back and forth between reading books and playing video games like that and the thing is is that like because i have a regular job and then i have you know my side business and i am a father uh there's not like there's no time for you yeah you get your free time in chunks so like you know I like oh I have you know 25 minutes I'll read some read some of this book or I'll go play a couple rounds of Call of Duty or

and you know that's really all I have and sometimes like at at the end I'll tell you what one day I hope to be able to do is watch full-length movies again because I just do not have the time to dedicate. And especially movies now, they're like three hours long and shit. So if somebody could bring back the action movies in the 90s that were 85 minutes long,

including the credit scenes at the end, I'd be very happy. But I don't know know i started working out again there's but yeah there's nothing nothing new i don't have i don't have time for new i just have time for the things that i already i already do i'm kind of the same way and not that i don't have it's not like i have kids or whatever that take i really don't have any of those things that you described that take up my time um maybe one day but not yet uh but you know i try to do new things because i get bored pretty easily um you know everybody knows i you know do brazilian jiu-jitsu but recently i got bored doing that and when i started doing boxing it's been a

lot of fun um mostly because you know i work from home um and i have to think of ways to get out of my apartment other than going to the gym. So now I also go to boxing, which I suppose is also going to the gym, but leave me alone, whatever. And I've recently picked up playing Magic the Gathering Arena online because I grew up playing Magic the Gathering back when you had to have physical cards and crowd into comic book shops. It all smelled like dick, ass, and armpit because anybody who's ever played Magic the Gathering knows the kind of people it attracts. So it's all of the fun of being addicted to card games

while not having to deal with the fans of said card games. And I am fucking terrible at it, but it's a lot of fun. I never got into the collectible card game thing. My daughter is like, she likes Pokemon, and she likes to collect Pokemon cards, but has no desire to actually play the Pokemon card game. I also did that when I was a kid. I mean, I was a kid in the era where Pokemon exploded.

So I had a fuckload of Pokemon cards. I never once learned how to play. Never once. Just like, I mean, like when I was a kid, like Yu-Gi-Oh was really popular on TV and I watched it and I didn't actually, I was not actually aware it was an actual card game. And I glossed over, like I quickly glanced over the rules. I'm like, I am 10. This is way too complicated.

So, yeah. Right. And then never, you know, and never mind that there's plenty of 10-year-olds that play the shit out of these games. I was just a dumb kid. I was just a dumb ass kid. Well, it's the thing. It's like my, I explained to my wife sometimes. Um, uh, my, I explained to my wife, uh, sometimes it's just like, sometimes it's like, there's certain things that like ping the little, the little spicy bits of your brain card games

never did. You know, like there's some, like whatever you're like, like my daughter, my daughter is, is on the spectrum. And you know, sometimes there's things just like, do not interest her whatsoever. And then there's things where it's just like, this is going to be the thing for the next month and a half um yeah so you know it's car collectible card games that never uh that never made my brain get uh feel real nice to do so i never really got into them it's but i understand that a lot of people really like it um i played the pokemon video game but even that i'm just like i mean you're just running around and they're, they're all the same.

Like it's just dog fighting for kids. It's lovely. Right. It's just, it's all, it's all the sale. Oh no, this one's open world.

It's all the fucking same. You're doing the exact same thing in every one of them until one of them is taking Pokemon to lead a coup. Um, I'm not interested. I want the dark gritty reboot of pokemon where someone uses like a charizard to like coup the president exact right robbing a bank at squirtle point i don't know like give me give me something good why do these children have dragons and like

why are they using these dragons to like fight other dragons instead of like you know i don't know delete homework you know one of my, one of my favorite fan theories, because I'm a sucker for fan theories, especially when they're like absolutely unhinged, is that the first Pokemon game takes place after a massive devastating war, which is why there's no adults anywhere and kids are just running around doing,

like effectively being like sports stars by forcing animals to fight one another uh and there's even a character in it there's a gym leader named lieutenant surge who talks about him and his right shoe fighting during the war like which is just fucking like i'm just imagining someone like riding on a pokemon's back and like stepping on an id getting fucked up i don't know it's great i want this thing to exist but it doesn't uh maybe one day i i hope and i hope where are you in this in this uh pokemon war do you like the people die but the pokemon are all they just faint like that's all that happens to them is they they pass out when they uh they throw themselves on the grenade or

when they get hit by when the gyarados gets hit by a fucking javelin missile it's just like instead of exploding into seven into 70 million pieces it just like gets little cross eyes and passes out just flopping my dead friend under the counter of the pokemon center all torn up francis thank you so much for joining me again here on the lines of my donkeys podcast. You can use this area to plug your stuff. Yeah, it's what a hell of a way to die. It is turning slowly into two middle aged guys talking about what it is to be middle aged.

So if you're there or if you're approaching that and you also are wondering what the fuck does being middle aged mean? Come come join us over on our show. of a way to die calm what a hell of a way to age yeah and everybody thank you so much for listening if you like what we do here consider supporting us on patreon five dollars will get

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until next time fuck Ohio yeah fuck em